


Drift

by biblionerd07



Category: Breaking Bad
Genre: Post-Canon, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Recovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-22
Updated: 2014-12-22
Packaged: 2018-03-02 18:06:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,058
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2821361
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/biblionerd07/pseuds/biblionerd07
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He picks a new name and a new town every month.  He drifts when he can and works when he has to.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Drift

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Star_sail](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Star_sail/gifts).



> This...is not happy. I'm sorry if you wanted a fluffy Jesse recovery fic, because this is not it.

His alarm blares at 7 am. He hits the snooze and sleeps for seven more minutes before it jars him awake again. He drags himself out of the bed, sniffing and shivering, and trudges to the bathroom to take a shower. The water runs cold the entire time and his tremors have less to do with the temperature and more to do with the memories of a hose pointed his way, jeering laughter caught in his ears, wet fabric clinging to his skin and weighing him down as he climbs down the ladder.

He goes down to the corner where the other day laborers are waiting and ends up spending the day sweating as he picks strawberries, back stooped and aching, old wounds throbbing in protest long before the day was over. He gets paid in cash and the foreman doesn't even look at him as he hands over the envelope. He goes back to the shit motel he lives in these days and pays for two more nights.

This month he is Roger Wilson. Last month, three towns over, he was Michael Smith. He hasn't decided who he'll be next month or where he'll go. He drifts when he can and works when he has to.

Sometimes he considers turning himself in, just to end this eternal running. The car he drove out of the compound is on its last legs and he's never learned how to fix machinery. But the thought of handcuffs, of being in chains again, of being locked away in another cage, makes his hands shake and his head spin, so he runs and he labors and he goes hungry often. He's used to it. He has an incredibly lucrative skill, he knows, and the blue stuff would get him incredible money because it's disappeared in the last two years.

He hopes he'll keep resisting that urge.

He screws a girl behind the bar they were both in, next to the dumpster, and he doesn't have to take off his shirt so she never sees his scars. He doesn't make a sound. He used to picture Jane or Andrea. Now he pictures no one, just loses himself in the physicality of it, because picturing either of them will make him vomit.

He leaves without even asking her name.

“ _Muy fuerte! Muy fuerte!_ ” The other day workers shout, trying to catch the attention of a contractor. Getting a manual labor job is better than picking fruit all day; usually the construction projects last a few days and pay better. He doesn't say anything, but he gets picked anyway, because he has a darkness around him that makes him seem stronger than he is. He doesn't care either way, even almost wishes he wasn't chosen because he knows some of these men have families at home, children with empty stomachs and bare feet. Exchanging the ache of bending over to pick strawberries for the ache of swinging a sledgehammer doesn't matter much to him.

His skin is darker, from working outside, because even in New Mexico he mostly stayed indoors. Below ground, even. His hair is bleached golden and his beard is thick on his face. It's terrible for the work, gathers sweat and dirt and dust, but it keeps him covered and makes him feel safer. It hides the long scar on his face, too. People don't respond well to men with scarred faces.

Once, he is in the supermarket buying food and he thinks he sees a ghost. He could swear he is seeing Mr. White's son, the one with the crutches or whatever they were, a beard trying its hardest to grow despite the baby-smooth skin underneath.

He ducks into an aisle and breathes hard through his nose, looking around furtively. He hopes Mrs. White isn't there. If she sees him she'll turn him in, he knows that for sure. She'll never stand for him getting off without punishment. He has seen, in diners with TV playing the news, the way reporters sneer at her, the way that family is still not left alone, even now. She gave up his name, though it didn't matter. The police already knew, because they found his taped confession at the compound and Schrader's wife gave him up, too. Both sisters named him and he has no room anywhere in his body to be angry about it.

He never sees her blonde head and wonders if he ever saw the kid in the first place. He sees things sometimes. He's learned to keep his head down until he hears actual words in his ears before responding to someone.

An old woman collapses picking grapes one day and he is the first to reach her. He pumps her chest and breathes into her mouth but it's too late, it's always too late, and the foreman pushes him aside angrily. He goes back to work and mangles a handful of grapes because his hands are shaking so badly. He pulls himself together and never thinks of it again.

He dreams of Jane often, her lipstick-ringed cigarettes in his ashtray, her disdainful laugh, the way she rolled her eyes. “New Zealand,” she'd said, but he can't leave the country. He has no ID anymore, not even with his real name on it, and he can't pay for a fake one either, but he did get to the coast. He stuck a toe in the Pacific Ocean and imagined her there beside him, in a big hat and sunglasses and a little bikini.

He dreams of Andrea sometimes, dreams of Brock and wakes wondering where he is, if he's okay, what he's learning in school. He knows Brock is taken care of; Andrea's grandmother was never far, and he's sure she has the kid now. She's a stable home.

Most often, he dreams of Todd, and he wishes he didn't. He wishes he could cut open his brain and tear out the parts that remember all of that—remember being beaten, remember Todd's curious way of slicing a blade just under his skin to see how he'd react, remember kicks and laughter and the drag of the dog run. He doesn't sleep well when he relives those days.

His alarm blares at 7 am. He hits the snooze and sleeps for seven more minutes before it jars him awake again.


End file.
